1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image encoding apparatus, an image encoding method and a program
2. Description of the Related Art
One of schemes for encoding an image is JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) based on the ISO/IEC 10918 Recommendation prepared by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission).
JPEG can acquire a relatively high compressibility. JPEG however suffers significant degradation of image quality at a low bit rate.
JPEG2000 based on the ISO/IEC 15444 Recommendation is one scheme which ensure suppressed degradation of image quality even at a low bit rate.
At the same compressibility, the quality of an image compressed by JPEG2000 is higher than the quality of an image compressed by JPEG With the same image quality, the compressibility of JPEG2000 is higher than the compressibility JPEG Further, JPEG2000 can execute an encoding process through nearly the same procedures in both lossless encoding and lossy encoding.
In view of the aforementioned advantages, JPEG2000 is expected to become popular as an encoding system (compression system) for compressing image signals generated by a digital camera, an image scanner and so forth and an encoding system (compression system) for compressing image data to be distributed over the Internet.
But, a higher compressibility is needed to send high-quality image data at a high speed in narrow-band communication, such as wireless communication.
The contents of the ISO/IEC 15444 Recommendation are incorporated herein by reference.